One of the most special things I’ve realized about returning to Canada is to see the husband reconnecting with friends and his family, loved ones and his community. The hardest thing, however, is as I exult in everything new and wondrous like a tourist, to occasionally see him lost in thought and suspended in nostalgia.
A place that is new to me, may be an old building distilled in his fondest growing-up memories that is now wholly renovated and now unrecognizable to him; a place that is still intriguing to me may be a quiet, crestfallen disappointment to him because it is simply no longer there or what it used to be. Seeing the world he’s left behind to pursue his calling helps me understand the sacrifices, anguish, and loss he’s going through, even when all the world sees is a heroic, valiant journey to obey God.
As we drive past the apple woods near his home, now barren in frosty spring, where we had taken our engagement shoot last summer filled with endless apple trees, I sometimes try to recollect those joyful memories and engrave them in an eternal memory.
Life changes when we are away from home, but then I remember what you always tell me when we are grieving in our transitions, that Home is where each other is, and that we have a heavenly home which awaits us when this all ends, someday.
“All these died in faith, without receiving the promises,
but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance,
and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth…
… But as it is, they desire a better country,
that is, a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God;
for He has prepared a city for them.”
Hebrews 11:13